India-Pakistan Nuclear Diplomacy
Constructivism and the Prospects for Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament in South Asia
By (author) Mario E. Carranza
Publication date:
15 July 2016Length of book:
288 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442245617
The conventional wisdom, based on realist premises, is that nuclear weapons are an irreversible reality in South Asia, and that efforts to denuclearize the subcontinent are a futile endeavor. As a result, real nuclear arms control in South Asia remains elusive and scholars continue focusing their efforts on how to achieve crisis stability and deterrence stability in future Indo-Pakistani confrontations. However, they tend to analyze India and Pakistan’s nuclear diplomacy as if the nuclear competition occurred in complete isolation from the changing dynamics of the international social environment.
Using a constructivist model, this study brings nuclear arms control and disarmament back into the debates on the future of Indo-Pakistani relations. Constructivism recognizes the independent impact of international norms, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Norm (NNPN), on India and Pakistan’s nuclear behavior. Even though the NNPN does not legally bind them, it is reinforced at the global level, and may lead the South Asian rivals to move in the direction of nuclear arms control and disarmament, thus reducing the costs, dangers, and risks of an eternal strategic rivalry. After examining the main tenets of constructivism in international relations, the works delves into the proliferation debate, discussing nuclear reversal and U.S. policy toward the subcontinent since the G. W. Bush administration. It looks at the prospects for nuclear arms control and disarmament in South Asia after the U.S.-India nuclear deal of 2008, and the nuclear abolitionist wave during the first Obama administration. It concludes with the contribution of social constructivism to understanding how changes in the India-Pakistan nuclear status quo can happen.
Using a constructivist model, this study brings nuclear arms control and disarmament back into the debates on the future of Indo-Pakistani relations. Constructivism recognizes the independent impact of international norms, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Norm (NNPN), on India and Pakistan’s nuclear behavior. Even though the NNPN does not legally bind them, it is reinforced at the global level, and may lead the South Asian rivals to move in the direction of nuclear arms control and disarmament, thus reducing the costs, dangers, and risks of an eternal strategic rivalry. After examining the main tenets of constructivism in international relations, the works delves into the proliferation debate, discussing nuclear reversal and U.S. policy toward the subcontinent since the G. W. Bush administration. It looks at the prospects for nuclear arms control and disarmament in South Asia after the U.S.-India nuclear deal of 2008, and the nuclear abolitionist wave during the first Obama administration. It concludes with the contribution of social constructivism to understanding how changes in the India-Pakistan nuclear status quo can happen.
A thoughtful and well-wrought examination of the India-Pakistan nuclear relationship that offers hope that New Delhi and Islamabad may, in time, retreat from their nuclear stand-off. Through the robust application of the international relations theory, with an emphasis on constructivism, Carranza shows that the two states’ nuclear confrontation is not an inescapable dilemma, but one that can become more tractable over time, in particular, because of the influence of global norms against nuclear armaments. Students of IR theory will find Carranza’s in-depth application of this scholarly tool to a specific, high-profile case to be of particular value.